


Cheat Day

by chronicAngel



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Baking, Birthday, Cake, Children, F/M, Fluff, POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 09:22:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16083179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronicAngel/pseuds/chronicAngel
Summary: "I love you," she says."I should hope so," he jokes. "After all the flour I swept up this morning? I earned that lifetime you promised me."





	Cheat Day

"John, be careful with that!" Dick says, catching a glass of water his two-year-old son knocks off the counter halfway between the countertop and the floor. _Babs was probably right about plastic cups_ , he acknowledges mentally while dumping the water out and putting the glass in the dishwasher to avoid future incident.

"Flour!" John yells back as though this should excuse everything, grabbing a bag of baker's flour that must be at least a third his size. Dick has a vision of white powder all over the kitchen floor and takes the bag from the toddler's little hands before it can come to pass. "Flour," John says again insistently, stomping his foot and making grabby hands for where Dick cradles the bag in one arm.

He shakes his head and puts the flour back on the countertop. "We already _have_ the flour, John. Daddy, how many eggs?" Mary says from the table, carton of eggs already in her hands, while John begins his struggle to climb up onto the counter again. He has no idea where James has disappeared off to.

"Three," he says, looking around the kitchen for his other son before expanding his search into the living room. It doesn't take long for him to spot James, trying not for the first time to ride the dog. Sora, to her credit, is always remarkably patient. "James, you're too big to ride on the puppy," he says, picking his son up and resting him on his own shoulders. "How about you ride on Daddy instead?" James, who has a startlingly large vocabulary for a two-year-old, for the record, squeals and giggles in response.

"Daddy!" Mary wails, and he sprints to the kitchen. When he skids to a stop on the tile, barely ducking below the door so James doesn't hit his head, he sees flour all over the floor and Mary panicking trying to get John down from the counter by herself while getting it all over her little feet. Her face is bright red and she is apparently crying, launched into crisis over this little-brother-counter-flour conundrum. He supposes that's the only way a six-year-old knows to react to the situation. "John climbed up onto the counter and I couldn't stop him and he knocked over the flour bag and now he won't come down because he doesn't wanna get it on his feet!" She sobs, all in one breath.

"Okay, calm down," he says slowly to her, putting James down. "We'll just sweep it up before Mama gets up, it's not a big deal, okay?" He adds. She sniffs and scrubs furiously at her eyes, eventually nodding her assent. He tries to creep around the flour, but finds that it's _everywhere_ and it's between his toes before he's halfway to his children, so he gives up and instead walks across the powder as fast as he can without slipping to get John down.

John swats at his head-- gets his face and the top of his head multiple times-- until he gets him securely into his arms, and then cuddles his face into the crook of his neck and sniffs as though he was the one panicking and crying a moment ago. Mary, he notes, has learned how to breathe again and her face is slowly returning to its usual color, some of the freckles that typically dust across her cheeks even peeking through the pink.

When his children have been safely herded into the living room and with Sora keeping an eye on them, he sweeps up the flour in the kitchen.

He stands in front of them with his hands on his hips afterward, Mary shrunken into herself on the couch and the boys seemingly having forgotten the incident. "John, you should have listened to me when I said to be careful. Flour is heavier than it looks." Remembering the parenting books he read six years ago when Barbara was pregnant with Mary, he crouches down in front of the twins and adds, "It makes me very upset when you don't listen to me, okay?" For the first time since he stepped into the room, his son looks up at him and nods in what he chooses to interpret as understanding.

"Okay then. If you promise to be more careful, we can go back to baking," he says, and John, recognizing the word _promise_ , immediately straightens and offers his pinky. Dick hooks his little finger with the toddler's and then the four of them go back into the kitchen. James picks out the eggshells Mary dropped into the bowl with his little fingers while Mary and John help him measure out the sugar, and then all three of the kids stir the ingredients together in the big bowl. It takes longer than it probably would if Dick helped them, but he's busy taking a thousand pictures on his phone and texting them to Bruce. It's only when they start to pour it into the pan by themselves that he steps in to help. "How about you let Daddy pour it and put it in the oven?"

It's almost nine in the morning by the time the cake is ready to come out of the oven, and the twins are half-asleep on the couch leaning against each other while Mary sits less than patiently in front of the oven, checking the clock every twenty seconds. _You'd think she'd get bored_ , he thinks, watching her just sit there in her little Star Wars pajamas. (He can't remember if they were a gift from Uncle Timmy or Uncle Jason, but she's obsessed with them even though she's almost grown out of them.)

"Go wake up your brothers, please," Dick tells her when the oven beeps, fumbling to press the "CANCEL" button before it wakes Barbara up. The boys are rubbing at their eyes in the doorway by the time it's on a plate on the table.

He recognizes that letting the kids take charge of frosting it is a mistake immediately after he says they can, and tries to help as much as they'll let him.

It's a bright green and yellow sugary monstrosity by the time they're done with it two full minutes later, and then Mary beams up at him. "How old is Mama?" She asks, holding a small box of birthday candles in her hands.

"Twenty-two," he responds dutifully, taking the box from her to open it. They went through the last of the last box at the boys' birthday in June. When he looks back at her face, her little eyebrows are scrunched together in a look he's come to recognize as her Calculating Face.

"That would mean she was 16 when I was born," Mary says. She's been learning basic math for the last month in first grade and it's come back to bite him, he realizes. "That's really young, Daddy. And you're even younger than her!"

He hums in thought, hoping to stall while all three of his children stare at him with wide, expectant eyes. "Mama wasn't 16 when you were born, and I wasn't even younger than that." She continues to stare at him skeptically. "I'll explain it to you when you're older," he says, though he knows how much she hates this. He distracts her with the newly opened box of candles.

She counts the candles out loud as she sticks them through the surface of the cake, and he has to stop her from going over so she can proudly show off that she can count all the way to 40. He's pretty sure his ~~36-year-old~~ 22-year-old wife would kill him, even if she would probably think it was kind of funny first. The second the last candle is in the cake, the boys, without prompting, charge off to wake up their mother.

He lights the candles and then he and Mary enter the room together, singing happy birthday while Barbara blinks at the doorway and squints through her glasses. _She probably just put them on_ , he thinks, smiling as he stretches out, "Dear Barbaraaaaaaaaa." The boys are nestled into either of her sides, singing what they know and can say of the words. "Happy birthday to you," he finishes, sitting on the edge of the bed and resting the cake in her lap.

She grins and blows the candles out, and then closes her eyes, though he thinks it is mostly for show. _I have everything I could wish for_ , she'd said to him a couple of months ago when they'd seen a shooting star. Things haven't changed much since. "I know it's not quite Alfred's baking, but we worked on it all morning," he says when she picks up a knife to start cutting the first slice, _which had better be hers because it's her birthday, Youngest First rules be damned_. "John _really_ wanted to help," he adds, cracking a playful grin at his son, who pouts and snuggles closer to his mother.

"Chocolate cake isn't exactly breakfast food," she says, raising her eyebrows at him.

He takes the knife from her to cut slices for the kids. "It's your birthday. I think you can cheat just this once," he says, suddenly wishing he'd remembered to grab plates. Mary is very neat, but the boys are destructive terrors in every aspect of their lives.

"You can clean the crumbs from the sheets today," she says, likely making the same observation he did. He simply rolls his eyes and continues cutting the cake. "I'm serious, Grayson."

"I know. I'll change the bedding before we go to the Manor this afternoon." _Implying that I wasn't gonna do that anyway. Like I'd make her change the sheets on her birthday_. Internally he rolls his eyes again, but externally he only smiles at her and sinks his teeth into his own piece of cake. It's a little bit sweet, but it's not as awful as all of his attempts at baking growing up-- or, in fact, cooking anything at all.

The morning is very peaceful. It's a sleepy Sunday and he requested the day off months ago, so they don't have to leave the house at all until the birthday party that the family is throwing for her at the Manor at 3:00. He'd lay in bed with her for the next six hours if she'd let him. (It doesn't seem very likely.) "Do you like the cake, Mama?" Mary asks, leaning against Sora (and he only just noticed the Akita jumped into bed with them) and the boys both look at Barbara with bright green frosting on their chins and noses.

She smiles at the five of them, a soft look on her face that he only catches when he glances at her while playing with the children. "It's great. Thank you. Chocolate is my favorite." He's pretty sure that her favorite is actually lemon cake, but he'll let her get away with the little lie. All three of their kids beam in response, and they grin for hours until they are eventually ushered out to change out of their pajamas. Once he and Barbara are alone in the room, she leans against his side, head tucked into the crook of his neck and strands of hair falling in her face. "I love you," she says.

"I should hope so," he jokes. "After all the flour I swept up this morning? I earned that lifetime you promised me." He turns his head to kiss her before her smile can drop and she can ask what he means by _all the flour I swept up this morning_. It's as magical as every other time they've kissed over the years. Someone told him once that kissing lost its charm after years and years together. That the reason marriages grow so domestic is because the little things like that stop mattering so much, so they just stop doing them. He's pretty sure whoever told him that was either bitter or cynical or both. When they break apart, they're smiling sweetly at each other. "I love you too," he finally says.

She hums. "You have flour in your hair, Hunk Wonder," she says, ruffling it affectionately even as white dust drifts down and nearly makes him sneeze.

**Author's Note:**

> Surprise! I did Dick's POV on a Babs birthday fic. Happy late birthday to Barbara Grayson-Gordon, one of the first fictional characters I wanted to be when I grew up! Many thanks to the Dickbabs server for helping me settle on whether to go with Grayson or Grayson-Gordon for the kids.


End file.
